Chapter Text
This has to be a set up.
Kyle sticks a shoulder through the wall of coats along one side of the closet, patting along the back. There’s got to be, like, a hidden camera in here or something. The wood is smooth against the palm of his hand as he taps along it, searching for some kind of indication there’s a webcam placed there. He reaches the end of the wall, coming up empty, so instead shoots his gaze towards the four corners of the room, trying to spot a microphone. If there’s no camera, there must be some kind of listening device. He squints through the near darkness, only a few cobwebs fluttering back at him. He wonders if there’s spy technology that exists in the world that can place hidden recording devices inside tiny spiders. He grabs at an umbrella, shoved up against the door, and swiffs the cobweb away.
Stan makes a noise of protest from where he’s sitting cross legged on the floor.
“Hey! Don’t kill the spider, it's not like it's gonna hurt you,” he says, his words a little slow. Kyle throws him a flat look, eyes adjusting to the low light of the closet, to see Stan’s eyes are slightly bloodshot, rimmed with red. No surprises there.
“I’m not trying to kill the spider,” he says tightly. “I’m just trying to figure out how Cartman’s watching us. You know this has to be a set up, right?”
Stan just blinks at him for a second, before his head rolls back on his shoulders, his skull thunking hollowly against the wall of the closet.
“Dude, you are not still this obsessed with Cartman,” he says flatly.
Kyle grits his teeth, anger flaring in his stomach at the insinuation. He throws the umbrella down more harshly than probably necessary, and tries to rattle the door handle again. Still locked. He checks the light up screen on his Casio wristwatch, the timer he’d set the second the door had shut behind them. They’ve only been in here twenty seconds, so there’s no chance of it being open.
“I think you’ll find the obsession always worked the other way around,” he says, before sighing deeply and sliding down the door. He folds his legs up underneath his body, careful to keep them tucked as far away from Stan as possible. Stan rolls his eyes.
“Whatever you say, Kyle,” he mutters, which only serves to piss Kyle off more.
“You don’t have to kiss his ass in here, Stan,” he says haughtily, “y’know, seeing as you’re so sure he’s not watching this entire thing unfold with a bucket of popcorn in his fat lap.”
“Harsh,” Stan says. “He hasn’t been fat since we were little kids.”
“Oh, so you do remember what he was like when we were kids then,” Kyle shoots back, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “Or is it just selective? I guess he never forced you to follow him around as a slave, blackmailing you so he could sit on your face.”
Stan doesn’t have a quip for that and it makes Kyle preen a bit. He likes coming out on top of arguments. That’s why he’s captain of the debate team. There’s silence for a moment, save for the noise coming from beyond the closet, the indiscernible chatter of those at the party, the thud of music through the speakers. Kyle checks his watch again. At least they’re a minute closer to getting out of here.
“Cartman wasn’t even playing the game,” Stan says then, as if his brain has just finally caught up. “So chill. The bottle has spoken. If you didn’t wanna play, why were you sitting in the circle?”
“I didn’t realise they’d be making boys come in here together,” Kyle says waspishly, wrapping his arms around his knees. There’s not enough room in this pokey closet for the two of them, not really. Stan is nearly taking up a whole corner with his broad shoulders and man-spreading knees alone, toying with a zipper on a jacket that’s hanging by his head. Kyle can see where his plain white tee is riding up at his waist, a sliver of muscle and dark hair peeking out from above his belt. It has some logo on the buckle, one of those tragic emo bands Stan still probably listens to, despite having stopped wearing chipped black nail polish. Kyle wonders when he stopped. He’d worn exclusively black throughout the entirety of middle school.
Stan shrugs.
“Why not? Craig and Tweek were playing,” he says.
“More to the point,” Kyle pushes, forcing himself to stop looking at Stan’s stomach and meet his gaze. “How come all you people in relationships are playing? When Wendy asked me to play, I didn’t realise all you couples were going to do it?”
Stan rolls his eyes.
“It’s just a stupid game, Kyle. It’s not a big deal. Wendy’s really mature, you know? She doesn’t constitute Seven Minutes in Heaven as cheating. Especially if I’m kissing a dude. It hardly counts.”
“Your logic is warped,” Kyle points out, but Stan just shrugs, unbothered.
“Whatever.”
He’s never been very good at disagreeing with Kyle, not really.
They sit there in silence for another minute, before Stan jerks up a bit straighter, balancing on elbow on his knee.
“So you’re gonna do the penalty then?” he asks. “For not playing the game right?”
“No!” Kyle splutters, cheeks reddening at the thought. The penalty involved stripping, in some capacity, and trying to do a keg stand, neither of which he intends to participate in. “I’m just gonna sit here and be quiet and then when we go out there, we can just pretend we did it.”
Stan frowns.
“You expect me to lie?” he asks. “Uncool, dude. Drinking games are, like, sacred.”
“What— what the fuck are you talking about, uncool? Isn’t it more uncool to kiss a guy? We’re not even—!”
Kyle shuts his mouth abruptly, glancing away from Stan’s now probing stare and looking harshly at the carpeted floor between them. He’s letting himself be drawn in, somehow has allowed himself to be forced into this closet, forced to this fucking party (thanks a lot Kenny, Kyle thinks, wondering where he’d even gotten to — he thinks he last saw him talking shit to Tweek Tweak of all people), and now almost forced into kissing a guy he’s barely spoken to since the beginning of high school.
“Not even what?” Stan asks. Kyle looks back up at him as Stan licks his dry lips. The singular, swaying light bulb above the two of them catches the way his lips shine now in the dim brightness. “Not even friends?”
Kyle forces his face into a hard, neutral expression.
“Yeah,” he says tonelessly.
“And that’s all my fault, right?” Stan bites back, his voice a little harder than its been throughout this entire interaction. Kyle frowns deeply at him, wrapping his arms tighter around his body, closing himself off.
“Give me a break, Stan,” he says. “It’s not like you’ve ever pretended to give a shit before now.”
Quiet reigns supreme once more, and this time, Kyle doesn’t feel nearly as glad that he got the last word in. He’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a secret little part of himself that had hoped Stan would argue, that there’d maybe still be some path towards reconciliation for the pair of them. No such luck. Stan just mutters something under his breath that Kyle doesn’t catch.
“What?” he snaps, pissed off with the situation and too warm in this stuffy closet and reeling from the litany of shots Kenny had done with him earlier that had gotten him drunk enough to sit down in the circle and play Seven fucking Minutes in Heaven.
“I’m not doing the penalty,” Stan says determinedly. “I have church in the morning, and my mom said if I was hungover again she was going to make me go to confession. And I’m not lying about it either,” he adds, scooting forwards a bit on his butt so he’s in the centre of the room. One of his socked feet nearly brushes against Kyle’s, and Kyle retracts his leg even further so it’s tucked up below himself. Stan stares at him with surprising conviction and taps at his mouth. “So just quit being a baby and let’s get this over with.”
“I’m not being a baby!” Kyle insists, cringing a little at how whiny his voice sounds. His heart is hammering against his chest now, disbelief at the situation being the primary cause of his panic, along with a smattering of undeniable, infuriating excitement. He swallows tightly, tries to get a handle on his emotions. His mouth feels impossibly dry all of a sudden. He licks his lips and Stan’s eyes follow the movement.
“Then hurry up and come here!” he insists, scooting forwards a little more. “Come on, it's just a little kiss, it won’t kill you. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”
“Stan,” Kyle says, and the word is choked now, caught in his tight chest and embarrassingly small. He shakes his head. “That hardly counts.”
Stan frowns.
“It doesn’t?” he asks. “I mean, I know it was just out of curiosity, but it was still a kiss, right? It was good practice. Paved the way for all the kisses to come.”
Kyle tries to force himself to maintain eye contact with Stan, failing spectacularly. He can’t look at him, not when he’s wearing those big, stupid puppy dog eyes and a slight pout of his full bottom lip. Stan tilts his head to one side, trying to force Kyle to look at him. The avoidance is just making the situation worse, Kyle knows this, but still he just stares at his own hands, fisted in the fabric of his jeans.
“You’ve kissed someone other than me… right?” Stan asks.
“Of course I—!” Kyle begins the snarling retort with every hair on his body standing on end, but it dies before he can finish it. Deflating, literally backed into a corner, Kyle tugs at either flap of his hat and pulls it down tighter over his ears. “Urgh. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Fine. Just get it over with.”
“Kyle,” Stan says, lifting a hand between them to stop Kyle from leaning forwards towards his mouth. “Hey, I didn’t mean to like— I wasn’t trying to—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kyle insists, swivelling his legs around so he’s up on his knees, now facing Stan directly. Their bare kneecaps brush through the holes in their jeans; Stan’s legs are covered in a smattering of dark hair, Kyle’s a pale mirror.
“Sure it does,” Stan says carefully, like he’s trying to coax an injured rabbit out of its burrow. “I don’t want you to feel like… I’m forcing you or something. I just—”
“Can you stop?” Kyle asks, his words trembling a bit, his breath catching as he tries not to burst into tears in front of his ex-super-best-friend. “It’s… this is really embarrassing, I don’t wanna… I just get really fucking nervous okay? I’m so bad at… at initiating any kind of… I don’t know, physical fucking contact, and I get all in my head about it and start to panic. It’s more than embarrassing, it’s mortifying, actually.”
“I get it,” Stan says, and Kyle scoffs at that, because he knows for a fact that Stan has had actual, honest-to-God sex with Wendy in the back of his car after football games, and the fact he’s trying to play down Kyle’s blushing innocence is excruciating. “No, seriously, like… don’t be embarrassed! You wanna hear embarrassing? I’m flunking Classic Lit so hard that I’m like on the line to lose my scholarship to UCLA. If I don’t maintain a C+ average then I’m toast. If I don’t get my shit together soon, I’m not only gonna be the first person from Park County High to get a football scholarship, but I’ll be the first person to lose it too. All because I’m too fucking dumb to understand The Great Gatsby.”
Kyle just watches Stan, utterly stunned by the speech he’s just given. This must be the longest conversation they’ve had since the summer before high school, and Kyle feels like he’s been catapulted back in time. Stan chews on his bottom lip for a second, eyes wide with concern.
“I haven’t actually told anyone else that,” he says, reaching up to run a hand over his face, eyes slipping shut as if in exhaustion. “I just… God, even after all this time, talking to you is just… easy.”
Kyle feels his traitorous heart squeeze a little and forces the butterflies erupting in his stomach down. He swallows the lump in his throat, hoping it falls all the way into his belly and crushes said butterflies to fucking death. He clears his throat.
“Yeah, Gatsby sucks. I’m in AP Lit, but I did it last year for extra credit,” he says quietly.
Stan makes a little noise of acknowledgement, a huff of air through his nostrils. Then, suddenly, his expression is lighting up.
“Well… maybe we could help each other out?” he asks.
Kyle shakes his head.
“Stan, I don’t—”
“Look, I know you’re probably super busy with applications and stuff,” Stan says quickly, words tumbling senselessly out of his mouth as a plan comes together in his head. “But think about it. You could help me scrape a passing grade in Gatsby and I could help you… loosen up a little.” Kyle starts at his choice of words, a small, trapped noise in his throat eking out. Stan reaches out to pat his knee through his jeans, and Kyle is rendered speechless once again. “Like I said, it's not like kissing dudes counts! It’s just two old friends helping each other out! You tutor me in English, I tutor you in… intimacy! At the very least, help shift some of the anxiety you’ve got around kissing. Like… exposure therapy or some shit. My therapist had me do some of that once.”
Kyle opens his mouth to protest, but it gets tangled up with the revelation that’s just fallen from Stan’s lips.
“Therapist?” he asks.
Stan’s elated expression crumples for a split second, before he’s brushing it off, smiling again. The dimple on the left side of his face is stronger than ever, sweeter than all of Kyle’s memories of it from when they were kids. It’s fast making his better judgement slip between his fingers, unbidden, forgotten. The alcohol still humming in his system is no doubt helping too.
“What do you say?” Stan grins. “Think of this as a trial. Let me prove my… credentials?”
Stan swoops in so his face is perilously close to Kyle’s, but Kyle can’t help but blurt out a laugh. Stan frowns, looking a bit hurt.
“Credentials?” Kyle repeats, bringing one hand up to his mouth to try and stifle his laughter (and subconsciously shield his lips from Stan’s). “Dude, what are you even talking about?”
Stan’s face quickly morphs back into a grin, and he laughs too.
“Yeah, see? I suck at words and shit. Better with actions. You help me with my words, I help you with actions. It’s a win-win, Kyle.”
“A win-win?” Kyle repeats around a smile, suddenly aware of the rush of warmth to his cheeks with how close Stan’s face is to his own. Stan nods, his mouth pressing to a brief line as he hums a noise. Mm-hmm. His dark lashes lower with heavy lids to partially conceal his eyes. Still sapphire blue, still impossibly earnest, just as Kyle remembers them. Stan’s fingers wind slowly around Kyle’s own, tugging his hand away from their protective shelter over his lips. Stan’s gaze flickers down towards Kyle’s mouth, tongue slipping out distractedly to moisten his lips. Kyle mimics him almost instinctively. He’s never been good at taking orders, determined to forge his own path and make his own decisions, but Stan has always possessed a special knack for subduing that. He’s always been easy to follow.
Kyle’s eyes fall shut as Stan presses his mouth carefully against his own, lips chapped but moist, breath a warm rush as it cloaks Kyle’s face. Kyle couldn’t breathe even if he wanted to, suspended in this moment, locked away from the prying eyes of the world in a place of their own making. It’s just like the first time Stan kissed him, beneath the blanket fort of his comforter, the moonlight washing them both in blue through the fabric.
Stan tilts his head, slotting their lips more readily together, easing Kyle’s hand up to rest on the side of his face. He does the same with his hand, palm coming to settle at Kyle’s jaw, skin rough against the stubbly nothingness of his pathetic teenage attempt at a beard. Stan uses his thumb to stroke, to ease the pocket of Kyle’s jaw open so he can fill his mouth with a hot rush of air. His tongue moves carefully, but with determination, no fear coming with it as he laps inside Kyle’s mouth. Kyle tries not to melt too obviously into it, tries not to let the whine of longing that’s sitting heavy in his chest escape as he kisses Stan back. A sound does escape, but it's more one of content, and Kyle is suddenly concerned that that is even more embarrassing. Stan seems to sense his trepidation, his other hand coming to slide the length of Kyle’s thigh and rest just at the jut of his hip, holding him in place. He kisses with a practiced ease, something he’s probably done a hundred, million times before, settling the whippet-quick race of Kyle’s pulse with comforting, careful movements.
All at once, Kyle is fourteen again, the feelings he’s spent the past three years trying to quash rearing back up inside him, sending his guts squirming and his toes curling in his socks. He throws caution to the wind. Stan’s open-mouthed kisses are better than he could have ever dared imagine, tangled up in his own bedsheets and rutting his hips against his mattress, teeth clenched tight on his pillow.
Stan’s lips pluck heavily at his own, a wet noise slapping between the two of them as he shifts his face, keeping his mouth close to Kyle’s even as he murmurs to the space in between.
“Breathe,” he instructs, thumb stroking distractedly at the edge of Kyle’s mouth as he watches him shakily inhale, before pressing back in. The kiss is hungrier this time, Stan seemingly content that Kyle is at least capable of the basics, his tongue sweeping the inside of Kyle’s mouth with fervor now. Kyle surrenders himself to the push and the pull, working to copy the way Stan licks into him, fingers wound unconsciously in the dark hair at the nape of his neck. He can feel the way his entire body is trembling. If Stan has noticed, he doesn’t let it stop him.
All at once, the alarm on Kyle’s watch begins to blare, signalling the end of seven minutes. It startles them both, springing back from one another as if they’ve been caught in the act, but the door to the closet remains closed. The party rages on beyond. Stan licks Kyle’s spit off his lips and smiles again.
“What’d I tell you?” Stan teases. “Pretty damn good, huh?”
Kyle blushes, and can feel the red of it abruptly transforming to what is an undoubtedly unflattering shade of purple, as he rolls his eyes and tries to force his mouth to move. Adrenaline is making him feel like he could throw up. Maybe he’s beginning to understand why Stan had been sick on Wendy’s shoes so many times.
He hadn’t thrown up that first time they’d kissed though.
Kyle shoves him lightly, trying not to focus on the bulk of muscle beneath Stan’s shirt, and the way he remains solid against Kyle’s fingers. He hadn’t been built like that when they were fourteen.
“Passable,” Kyle says haughtily and Stan bursts out laughing, rolling back and away from him.
“Like you have any basis for comparison,” Stan says, but it's not mean, the way he says it, and he looks too proud of himself for Kyle to snap anything back at him. “So, come on. Do we have a deal? You’d be doing me a solid, dude.”
Kyle adjusts his hat, looking for anything to do that might momentarily distract him from Stan.
“I’ll tutor you without the make out lessons on the side, you know,” he says. He’s not sure why he does, given that he wants nothing more than to be kissing Stan again, like, right this fucking second, but its probably because he wants to give him an out. Kyle couldn’t cope with the idea that Stan is doing this because he feels forced. Stan frowns.
“Seriously? I thought you were really into that! I can do it again if you’re not convinced!”
“Stan,” Kyle chides, willing him to be serious for a second. It’s probably a lot to ask, seeing as he knows Stan was stoned when they came in here and this whole thing will probably end up being one giant fever dream for him when he wakes up tomorrow.
“What?” he shoots back. “C’mon, dude. I know how busy you are, and I know how shit I am at Classic Lit. I’m gonna need a bunch of help, and I’m not accepting it without having something to do in return. The second you feel like you could go out there and put the moves on any girl at this party, we can stop. ’Til then, let me do this for you.”
“What about Wendy?” Kyle asks. “Why don’t you just ask her to tutor you?”
Stan’s easy grin weakens a bit at the edges, but he doesn’t look away.
“What about her? Look, she doesn’t know I’m failing and I can’t deal with her finding out. Her disappointment will just depress the fuck out of me, ’cause she already tried so hard to help me scrape by last year. And I told you already — the kissing doesn’t count. This is just… one friend helping out another.” He clears his throat, looking marginally uneasy for the first time in a while. “I mean… I know you don’t consider us—”
“Of course, we’re friends, Stan,” Kyle says. The words hold too much weight, abruptly shattering the gentle quiet they’d forged inside this closet, but Kyle takes a deep breath and soldiers through anyway. “Of course we are. It’s just… you know, people grow up and do different things.”
Stan nods, his eyes a little redder than before. He clears his throat.
“Think they’ve forgotten about us out there?” he jerks his chin towards the door. Kyle shrugs.
“It’s very possible. Hang on, I’ll text Kenny.”
“How is Kenny?” Stan asks.
Kyle shoots him a glance over the top of his phone as he types out an SOS, suddenly feeling a little out of his depth. He clears his throat.
“Uh… don’t you buy weed from him?”
Stan shakes his head.
“Nuh uh. Pick up straight from Kevin. Need to text him, actually.”
Kyle doesn’t comment on how weird that is, given Kenny sells directly to everyone in their school out back of the gym. He’s not even sure why he’d asked that question. He knows Stan and Kenny haven’t spoken in a long while, since before Stan and Kyle even stopped hanging out for good. Kyle suddenly feels an uncomfortable lurch of regret in his gut at having made out with Stan on the floor of the closet, but he doesn’t have time to let it linger, as the door swings open.
Kenny McCormick stands silhouetted in the doorframe, black surgical mask pulled under his chin so he can drink deeply from the beer clenched in his fist. He’s got a new bruise on his cheek, which would otherwise be hidden with the mask. He’s wearing his trademark parka, a pair of baggy dark jeans with a chain attached to his wallet and a pair of DCs that are nearly completely torn open at the toe. He raises a brow at Kyle, a grin tugging at the edge of his mouth.
“The rescue party has arrived! You look too sober, Kyle, let’s get you a drink,” he says smoothly, eyes slipping over to focus steadily on Stan. He nods. “Marsh.”
Stan opens his mouth to say something back, but Kenny has already grasped Kyle by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet, trailing him out of the closet.
“I’ll text you,” Stan calls after Kyle, but it's Kenny who answers.
“Number’s changed,” he shoots blankly over his shoulder. He drops Kyle’s arm, but nudges him gently with his elbow. “C’mon, dude. This party sucks, I’ve got a case of Bud out back of Casa McCormick with our names on it.” He plucks a cigarette from behind his ear and makes a beeline for the door, expecting Kyle to follow.
Kyle does, but not before he opens his phone and sends a text to a number that he’d copied from his old cell during what must have been a fit of psychotic nostalgia. He waits until he hears Stan’s text tone ring out behind him before ducking out the back patio doors and following Kenny into the night.